Gore picks up votes in Broward recount

Palm Beach count shows little change

PLANTATION, Florida (CNN) -- A manual recount of ballots in Broward County found new votes for Vice President Al Gore, but a similar recount in Palm Beach County showed little change as the battle over whether to include those results headed for Florida's Supreme Court.

About 70 counting teams gathered in the Broward County emergency operations center for a fourth day of counting Saturday. With ballots in 210 of the county's 609 precincts recounted, Gore had a net gain of 59 votes, county officials said.

Each counting team is comprised of four people: two ballot
counters and one representative of each of the major
political parties.

More than 588,000 ballots were cast in the county in the
November 7 presidential race. Broward County's canvassing
board predicted it will complete the entire process late
Monday afternoon.

Bush aides allege 'distortion'

With control of the White House hanging on Florida's 25
electoral votes, the count of overseas absentee ballots
completed Saturday gave Republican nominee George W. Bush a 930-vote
lead over Gore in Florida's presidential
recount. Gore, the Democratic nominee, has pushed for hand
recounts in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, all
heavily Democratic.

Denis Newman, an attorney for the Democratic Party, likened
the alleged problem to a 3-hole punch not cutting completely
through the paper.

Meanwhile, Republican monitors complained that several
ballots appeared to have been tampered with.

"We probably saw maybe seven, eight, nine, 10 different
ballots that had pieces of tape that were obviously
meticulously cut out and placed over various holes over a
ballot," GOP observer Jeff Cahrs said. "Maybe two or three of
these were on the presidential column ballots, and the other
ones were for other races as well."

As of 1 p.m. Saturday, about 25 percent of the county's 531 precincts
had completed their review by hand of the county's 462,000
ballots, Burton said.

Twenty-five teams of counters were working two seven-hour
shifts monitored by Democratic and Republican Party
observers. He said inspection of the ballots shows "an awful
lot of undervoting."

"I'm seeing an awful lot of people who apparently didn't feel
like voting for anybody in this race," Burton said.